- Tsetsaut language
Tsetsaut is an extinct
Athabascan language formerly spoken in thePortland Canal area of northwesternBritish Columbia . Virtually everything known of the language comes from the limited material recorded byFranz Boas in 1894 from two Tsetsaut slaves of theNisga'a . It is not known precisely when the language became extinct. One speaker was still alive in 1927.The Tsetsaut referred to themselves as the [wetaŀ] . The English name "Tsetsaut" is an anglicization of [ts'əts'aut] , "those of the interior", used by the
Gitksan andNisga'a to refer to the Athabaskan-speaking people to the north and east of them, including not only the Tsetsaut but some Tahltan and Sekani.Bibliography
* Boas, Franz, and Pliny Earle Goddard (1924) "Ts'ets'aut, an Athapascan Language from Portland Canal, British Columbia." "International Journal of American Linguistics," vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 1-35.
* Collison, W. H. (1915) "In the Wake of the War Canoe: A Stirring Record of Forty Years' Successful Labour, Peril and Adventure amongst the Savage Indian Tribes of the Pacific Coast, and the Piratical Head-Hunting Haida of the Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia." Toronto: Musson Book Company. Reprinted by Sono Nis Press, Victoria, B.C. (ed. by Charles Lillard), 1981.
* Dangeli, Reginald (1999) "Tsetsaut History: The Forgotten Tribe of Southern Southeast Alaska." In: "Alaska Native Writers, Storytellers & Orators: The Expanded Edition," ed. by Ronald Spatz, Jeane Breinig, and Patricia H. Partnow, pp. 48-54. Anchorage: University of Alaska.
External links
* [http://www.ydli.org/langs/tsetsaut.htm First Nations Languages of British Columbia page]
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